Red Lotus: Billy Ngo Makes Dim Sum Cool

Red Lotus Kitchen and Bar
2718 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95816-4314
(916) 231-0961


Red Lotus is the latest Midtown venture of Kru chef Buu "Billy" Ngo, whose fascinating riffs on Japanese food have won him a not-inconsiderable following at his J Street sushi joint. Red Lotus represents Ngo's decison to apply his creative hand to dim-sum, an Asian food genre that hasn't quite managed to transcend the old carts-and-Cantonese-verbal-abuse dynamic. (Course', that's part of dim sums charm for some of us infidels, but, regardless). The menu features a bunch of old dim-sum standbys updated for the late-night hipster army, alongside some specifically Ngoesque dishes. The result is a fun and undeniably interesting evening out on the J street strip, albeit with the ambience of P.F Changs done through some sort of hipster filter. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we want to eat upscale dim sum in a nice clean place where no one will shout at us in machine-gun bursts of Cantonese while we desperately attempt to hold onto chicken-feet with plastic chopsticks, okay? Is that really so wrong?

(Good lord, the entire culture is obsessed with hipsters, my generation is obsessed with hipsters, we engage in hipster witch-hunts although it is entirely a given that we are all hipsters, that our status is both unchangeable and endlessly embarrassing. How sad.)


Green papaya salad with ika, carrot, mint, water cress, and fish sauce (6.50)

This is the kitchen's version of the dearly beloved som tum. It's a lovely palate-cleansing dish, but this ultra light version was barely there, both in terms of portion size and taste. I really do hate to use this phrase in polite company, but perhaps Red Lotus should contemplate kicking it up a notch. You know how we do.


Silken organic tofu with baby shrimp, avocado, snow crab, rice puffs, wasabi, sweet chili sauce, and a soy reduction (8.00)

Silken tofu doesn't exactly get most folks palms sweaty, but this was the standout dish of the evening. The creamy block of tofu melded perfectly with the salty baby shrimp, the sweet snow crab, and the creamy avocado. The various sauces on offer mean that every bite of this "salad" is different from the next, producing a real adventure in texture and taste. The soy reduction sauce should rightly be sold in bottles so fans can spread it on anything they desire, from fairy cakes to pliable Argentinean pool boys. Delicious.


Spiced beef marrow bone with Chinese red vinegar, Sichuan pickles, mustard, and crispy five spice flatbread (11.00)

Marrow bones have experienced a helluva revival thanks to the ongoing Offal Revolution, and Red Lotus is serving up the tastiest version I've found in Sactown. The fatty, chunky interior is seasoned with five spice and cooked until bubbly and delicious, served with various accompaniments and condiments. You're supposed to spread the marrow on the flatbread crackers and doctor it up with pickles, vinegar, and mustard, but I'm perfectly happy to denude these bad boys straight. You are doing it/Red Lotus wrong if you fail to order this dish. (I'll be in my bunk. With the marrow bones).


Salt and pepper soft shell crabs (11.00)

Salt and pepper soft shell crabs are beautifully presented in this dish, and they tasted pretty good too. Lightly fried and obviously fresh, I enjoyed the creamy and spicy sauce pool the little crustaceans were served in. They came out hot, which is the usual horrible and depressing downfall of soft-shell crab dishes.


Chinese broccoli in garlic oyster sauce (7.00)

Chinese broccoli sounds fairly pedestrian but is among the foods closest to my heart - the sort of thing I seem to cook on a tri-weekly basis to devour in front of my laptop in my college apartment. (Good lord, those days are over). Red Lotus serves it up with a soulful and extremely strong house-made garlic oyster sauce, and the result is pretty old-school Chinese delicious. Avoid if you're not the sort of person who does backflips for in-your-face servings of oyster sauce.


Mongolian glazed oxtail (7.00)

Oxtails are done beautifully in Chinese cooking, and these sweet-glazed oxtails were a lovely specimen of a classic dish. Very rich and very meaty, these guys justify the foodie world's recent and single-minded allegiance to less-charismatic animal parts. Tasty.


"Yee Sang" thinly sliced albacore with popcorn shoots, Chinkiang vinaigrette, and crispy garlic (12.00)

I think the Sacramento City Council actually shuts down your restaurant and breaks your knee caps if you fail to include at least one raw tuna dish on the menu. It's true.

Regardless. This was a perfectly fine Raw Tuna dish, and the addition of popcorn shoots (whatever those are) lent it an interestingly grassy flavor-kick. There's more interesting stuff lurking on this menu, though.


Pork and shiitake dumplings "Siu Mai" with soy cured salmon roe (6.50)

We decided to have some siu mai for dessert, served in the traditional and adorable little bamboo steamer. The kitchen brings out vinegar and Chinese mustard in twee serving devices for these little guys, which tasted no different from other dim-sum parlor siu mai I've had. This is by no means a bad thing.


Billy Ngo has done a fine job of domesticating dim-sum, turning China's beloved Sunday morning-scrum cuisine into refined bites suitable for both J Street-crawling foodies and those hipster palates only slightly dimmed by endless, endless packs of Pall Malls. (If you've been to China, well, you've seen how they smoke). The menu is interesting, and due to the restaurant's extreme youth, will doubtless be changing in interesting ways over the next year or so. If Ngo's creativity and competency at Kru is any indication of Red Lotus's upcoming trajectory, the future is bright indeed.

New Canton: Sunday Dim Sum, Human Existence is Secured

New Canton Restaurant
2523 Broadway
Sacramento, CA 95818-2658
(916) 739-8888

Dim Sum on Sunday's is delightful, something natural. I remember going for dim-sum when I was 8 years old or so in Atlanta: there were cart-ladies, shrimp toasts with sesame seeds stuck to them, big squashy pork-buns, spareribs, on and on. The dining hall functioned at a volume normally restricted to air-force bases, and it was huge, at least to my underexperienced eyes. I have enjoyed dim-sum ever since. I've had it in one of the soul-centers for the stuff - Hong Kong - and was delighted to find the Sunday dim sum tradition is not particularly dissimilar from place to place. (There was nearly a riot over chicken buns at the joint in Hong Kong, of course... "They're from the country, they don't know better," our table mate informed us with a derisive wave - but riots are not a neccessity for dim sum enjoyment, not at all.)

New Canton is one of Sacramento's few dim sum outlets, and it does a pretty good job. There are the requesite carts, the crowds of loud shouting people, the fresh-fish tank, the jellyfish salad and steamed chicken feet and thousand-year-egg congee. Roast pork and duck are of course available for the masses.


Chicken feet, always about the goddamned chicken feet (fung zau).. They're pretty good here: large, flavorful, dipped in sauce. They are a total bitch to pick up with chopsticks, but one learns the technique eventually. You may recall the recent news story regarding the Chinese indignation that we might curtail their chicken-foot supply: American chickens have such "big, fat" feet.



Minced scallops in a fried dumpling. Pretty good, and thankfully served warm enough. Chilled fried stuff that's been circumnavigating around on carts for the past hour is never good.


Shrimp dumplings or har gau, a perennial favorite. Quite good here. They're one of those things that no one dreams about but are unavoidable in practice.


Seaweed salad and some sort of glutinous thing flavored with sesame I cannot identify. I happen to deeply enjoy glutinous things flavored with sesame, so this was a hit for me. Nice to have something chilled to go with the other dishes.


Fried salt and pepper shrimp (椒鹽蝦) head-on, the way God made em'. Very nice, and hot enough - don't bother if they are not piping hot. If you don't eat the heads, you're missing out on a delicious, fatty treat. Same principle as suckin' crawdad heads.


Fried dumplings with crab inside and an extremely crispy interior. Pretty good, though skip the sweet n' sour sauce, there ain't no excuse for that.


Spareribs with black bean sauce (pai gwhut). Bony, fatty, oh-so-comforting. Can't have dim sum without em'.


Char siu, or BBQ pork. New Canton does very good BBQ pork and duck - it's one of their specialities -and this was no exception, with a nice smoky flavor and a carefully balanced ratio of fat to meat.

Serve all this with copious amounts of tea, and all is right with the world. We found that going at noon beats the AM rush - a good idea if you're not interested in fighting to be heard over a sea of excited Cantonese conversation. On the other hand, sometime you are.

New Canton: The Real Deal in Sacramento

New Canton
2523 Broadway
Sacramento, CA 95818
(916) 739-8888



New Canton is another outpost of authentic Chinese goodness on Broadway. Known for its raucous dim-sum Sundays and the long lines to get in on most weekends here in Sacramento, I think it's popular for a good reason: this is real, good Chinese food. If I want a Chinese meal that reminds me of my time in Hong Kong, mile-a-minute Cantonese, super fresh seafood and endless cups of tea included, this is my choice in Sacramento.

Entering New Canton, you pass by a row of aquamarine colored tanks full of doomed sea creatures, gulping away at you as you mount the stairs to the big upstairs dining room. The servers, nattily attired in teal vests, plonk you down at a table, give you a menu (if you're not doing dim sum) and give you about two and a half minutes to decide what you want - which can be difficult considering the breadth and deliciousness of all that's on offer.

Dim Sum, however, is New Canton's main draw - and it's definitely got the formula down, slinging plates of tasty small bites off quickly moving carts. I may not be an expert, but the dim sum here is about as good as what you can get in San Francisco, and definitely is a huge asset to Sacramento's Asian dining scene. I'm usually impressed with the freshness and quality of the dishes. The dumplings (shu mai especially) are excellent, the rice noodle rolls are fresh and full of carbohydrate goodness, and the pork buns are thick and sweet. Be brave: try the chicken feet, which are delicious if a bit difficult to negotiate with chopsticks. Jook, noodles, and a variety of roasted meats are also on offer, as well as the usual line up of dim sum desserts - egg custards, sweet buns, and the like.



On my most recent visit, I was experiencing a terrible jones for oysters and decided immediately on the oysters in black bean sauce (market price.) The oysters here are as big as my hand - mutant creatures - and are very tasty indeed when doused in a meaty black bean sauce with a hit of vinegar and chili oil. You can't shoot these without choking yourself. I believe the shells could be used as a deadly weapon in a pinch.

Seafood is a good choice here, and I love the delicate, spicy and crunch rendition of salt and pepper squid done here - tentacles and all, which are sometimes neglected in Chinese versions of fried squid. The shell on salt and pepper prawns are a similar preparation and equally delicious, savory shells giving way to the plump and tender meat beneath. Do eat the heads....they have a curious and sublime nutty flavor which I'm addicted to.



On my most recent visit, I adored the sea bass cooked in a clay pot with eggplant. It was spicy, rich, and tasted just like a dish I ordered constantly while I was in Beijing. Something about the combination of tender-but-firm white fish cooked with meaty eggplant just creates Chinese food perfection. Leftovers were tasty the next day thrown into a noodle soup.



This dish with scallops and something described as "mushroom nuts" was tasty and perfectly prepared, although too bland for my tastes - I like my food to slap me around a little. We made the mistake of asking the server for a recommendation, which is a lousy idea if you're a lily white person in a real Chinese restaurant - they never are going to believe you if you say you really do like spicy food, and for good reason..they don't want to absorb the cost if they serve you something funkadelic and you send it back. They assume most Westerners want their Chinese food to taste like candy, and quite frankly, most of us do.

Thus, making such safe recommendations is not the servers fault, but it also means it falls upon you to figure out what you want. Still, the scallops and the vegetables were cooked just long enough, and the taro (I think) basket everything was served in was tasty enough in a candy like way.

New Canton has a damn fine hand with roast meats, and both the roast pork and the Peking duck are excellent. Peking duck is served traditional style with buns, green onion, and hoisin sauce, the light-as-air skin adhering in a greasy cloud to the rich dark duck meat beneath. I also love the crackly, vaguely citrus flavored skin left hanging on the pork - if you make any noises about cholesterol, you deserve to be slapped. Both meats are also available in small portions during dim-sum session. Keep your eyes open.

Service is quick, but dishes tend to come out in somewhat bizarre configurations and timing - which is admittedly how things are done in mainland China. It can get irritating to be immediately served one dish, then have to wait for indeterminable amounts of time for another to appear. Noise level is extremely high, especially when they're really cranking on the dim sum on Sundays. Do not expect to be able to carry on a quiet conversation, or any conversation at all when things get really crazy. Do expect to stand around in a long and confused line on the weekends as you wait for dim-sum. Hey, the fish are entertaining, especially the vaguely obscene looking geoduck clams. (Yummy!)


New Canton is an excellent place to get a fix of real Chinese food - and the ambiance is authentic as well, in both chaos and volume level. Look past it and dig in to some real Chinese food.